Rainy Day in Hiroshima

One thing about the weather here in Japan in March. Its unsettled. In Tokyo earlier this week we had a few days of on and off rain and then my last day there it was simply beautiful but cold all day. Today here in Hiroshima, the weather was mostly rainy. Its a gentle rain for the most part so I tend to get out and poke around and then come back to the room and read and relax and then go again. I spent today looking at the areas around my hotel. I think Hiroshima is a fantastic city to wander in. The side streets are gems of little restaurants, pubs, and evening clubs. There is an enclosed mall area which is fun to walk through as well. I’m going to wait to go out again until this evening so may add a bit more to the blog post then.

I love the downtown and river areas with the small bridges and little communities down side streets. I also started playing around with zone of focus and manual mode on my X100F which I had not done in awhile. That’s a good sign by the way. I had kind of stopped learning about my camera and now I feel energized about experimenting more. One thing I do know is I will never be more than a novice at this stuff. I don’t do post processing, shoot in raw, use Lightroom. I just shoot the jpegs and grab them from the camera and enjoy them and share on google photos. Maybe at some point I will start doing that but for now I want to learn manual photography more.

Here’s some frames from today’s adventures.

I think the rain is starting to clear a bit so I may add more to this post this evening. I’d like to do a few night shots of Hiroshima if things get a bit dryer out.

Retirement Thoughts

I’ve been retired only a week now from a rather busy 20 years doing IT. I catch myself wondering whether a thing is done and then I realize its not mine any longer and I’ve left it behind. Others are doing the work and my work finally is taking some time for myself, reading and learning the camera, living elsewhere. A person asked me if I felt guilty leaving all of what I had behind. I guess the operative words are “all” and “behind” in the remark. No, I don’t feel guilty about leaving. This was a thing that started for me last year but I knew in 2011 a time would come when I’d go.

Asia just happens to be the place I ended up but I could have gone other places that were cheaper as well. There still are cheaper places just not in the United States overall. The real thing about Southeast Asia is that I am comfortable here. There is a goodness of fit in the places. I think about my grown children a few times a day. I do know you never outgrow them but you do have to make a life for yourself and not just live through them.

I realized on the train that I had to do that. That my happiness means something. That I must find a new thing which is not the same as the old thing. I don’t want to meet the new boss that’s the same as the old boss.

The blog here was created not just for travel and vagabonding but for introspection, technology, anthropology. All the categories. I just feel now I can make the most use of the time I have left. If I stayed at home in California, nothing of note would have happened and I would have ended up continuing to work because the cost of living in the Silicon Valley is ridiculous. As my friend Robert remarked over coffee one day,

the whole place here is like Hong Kong. A special economic zone.

Yes and it places retirement and joy of life easily out of reach unless I am the CEO of something or the founder of something else.

What I want is a cheaper existence which will let me do things, eat and drink well, and adventure forth.

Sorry to bore you with the introspective stuff. Sometimes its grist for the mill and the blog is an easy reach away.